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Users need to consider a lot of things when picking a theme for their WordPress website. The most important parameter is performance. Unfortunately, not a lot of people consider this factor important enough while going theme-shopping.

This article covers five of the most popular paid WordPress themes that are well known for their solid performance metrics.

The metrics below are listed as per the basic performance tests performed on those themes:

AVADA

For over four years, AVADA has remained one of the best selling themes. Many users consider it one of the most trusted and complete themes for WordPress sites. The theme comes with powerful tools and options, responsive framework, amazing support, unlimited designs, and a lot more. You can check out the demo before buying this theme.

Here are the performance metrics for Avada

Pingdom score – 92%

load speed – 0.97 seconds

Accessibility audit – 94% (excellent)

Pagespeed insights – 73% for mobile

Pagespeed insights – 88% for desktop

Page weight – 1.3Mb

webpagetest.org – Straight A’s

Avada uses all the meta tags properly, and the elements are nicely structured along with all the ARIA attributes followed properly.

Final thoughts

As abundantly clear from the metrics, AVADA is a great WordPress theme that scores really well across all the major parameters. These tests were performed by ThemeFusion and it was able to increase PageView insights score for the desktop version from 48% to 88% by changing the image weight. This means that the type of images uploaded to the website has great implications for the performance. So, it’s good to see that AVADA is built in accordance with this accessibility.

The7

This WordPress theme comes with seamless integration with Ultimate Add-ons and Visual Composer. In addition, the theme offers over 750 options for various businesses which make it one of the most highly customizable themes out in the market. Regardless of the type of the website, the theme could be customized to present the perfect blend of functionality and looks. The7 has its own Design Wizard Feature which is super easy to play with and makes customization of the theme elements a piece of cake.

Here are the performance metrics for The7

Pagespeed insights – 64% for mobile

Pagespeed insights – 91% of desktop

Pingdom score – D grade at 68 %

webpagetest.org – Straight A’s.

load speed as noted by Pingdom – 1.51 s

Accessibility audit score – 83%

There are some missing alt attributes for a few image elements and the color contrast ratio could have been better. Still, the accessibility is solid and the elements are well-structured. These tests were performed on ‘The7 – Construction demo’, that was quick to load because the images and other elements were quick to load.

BeTheme

This is a powerhouse of versatility and the perfect fit for your WordPress website. However, the winning point about BeTheme is the huge selection of more than 300 pre-built websites which give it quite the edge over competitors.

Here are the performance metrics for BeTheme

Pagespeed insights – 76% for mobile

Pagespeed insights – 87% for desktop

Pingdom score – A grade at 98 %

webpagetest.org – Straight A’s.

load speed as noted by Pingdom – 1.27 s

Page weight across chrome development tools – 1.8 Mb

Accessibility audit – 80% (the contrast ratio is not good enough due to the theme being dark. Additionally it doesn’t use the ARIA codes properly).

Final thoughts

BeTheme is quick to load simply because the creators have prioritized the visible content with the inclusion of essential stylizing.

Bridge

Another Powerful WordPress theme, Bridge comes with over a 100 demos. The content of all the demos are easy to import.

Here are the performance metrics for Bridge

Pagespeed insights – 78% for mobile

Pagespeed insights – 91% for desktop

Pingdom score – B Grade (80%)

webpagetest.org – AAAAA☒.

load speed as noted by Pingdom – 1.11 s

Page weight across chrome development tools – 1.6 Mb

Accessibility Audit score – 91 %.

The audit report is excellent with only minor points affecting the overall score. ARIA attributes of the theme are in line with the best practices. Page elements are nicely structured describing the content well with easy to understand nomenclature.

All and all, it is a good theme to bet on with a few minor exceptions where things could have been better. For example, if there was the option to minify HTML, it could have helped boost the Pagespeed insights score (although the score is already great for desktop) Opting for a quality managed cloud hosting is likely to add a much-needed boost to the performance numbers.

Newspaper

As evident by the name, this WordPress theme is primarily for bloggers, editors, journalists, publishing houses, magazines, newspapers, review sites, etc. Newspaper lets you create blog posts with utmost ease and comfort. What’s more, the theme promises excellent support and is user-friendly. Newspaper supports YouTube videos along with a rating system. You can also integrate it with bbPress Forum, BuddyPress, WooCommerce, etc. Newspaper supports all the best SEO practices and is simple and fast.

Here are the performance metrics for Bridge

Pagespeed insights – 76% for mobile

Pagespeed insights – 77% for desktop

Pingdom score – 93 %

webpagetest.org – AAAAA☒.

load speed as noted by Pingdom – 1.19 s

Page weight across chrome development tools – 1.5 Mb

Accessibility Audit score – 86%.

The score can surely be improved by describing the links and buttons used for toggles and JavaScript control properly. Newspaper scores very high across all major boards. JS and CSS compression and image optimization are a few standard improvements that can be applied. But, overall it’s a good theme if you are looking for a high-performance website.

Wrapping Up

If you look around a bit, you will find plenty of promising WordPress themes out there. We presented you with five of the most popular and high performing themes along with their performance metrics. Do take these benchmarks into consideration to select the right theme for your next WordPress projects.

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About Author

Moeez is ‘The’ blogger in charge of WPblog. He loves to interact and learn about WordPress with people in the WordPress community. Outside his work life, Moeez spends time hanging out with his friends, playing Xbox and watching football on the weekends. You can get in touch with him at moeez[at]wpblog.com.

WPblog is a WordPress resource website that regularly publishes content covering WordPress themes, plugins, hosting, news and ecommerce. WPblog aims to educate WordPress users about the best WordPress products and best practices so that they can create amazing websites.